Tifinagh Writing On Prayer Rug Format Poem by Denis Mair

(for a painting by Abdelhaq Djellab, posted Feb.14,2025 on FB)
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The ancestors must have had something to confide...
their eyes beheld a world teeming with marks,
luring men's surmises to penetrate nature's veils.
They felt a call rise in their hearts,
knowing themselves fated to advance the art of writing.
Even before they acquired habits of record keeping,
they covered a surface to let the marks dance freely...
to let them reach for what was beyond knowing,
like vessels to contain men's future understanding
or a tunnel to guide their descendants' recollections.
Now in a world that is a Babel of written texts,
the marks are laid out anew in a quiet corner,
by one who re-entered their dance...
who re-engaged with their primal hopes,
now put into the format of a bordered prayer rug...
given the colors of pomegranate and bleached flax.
Because their marks once led the way
for humans to engage with the unknown,
the ancestors are hereby invited to be intercessors
for communing with our ultimate Origin.